Future UEFI support in SpinRite

[RandomFlux]

If you really do not care how long it takes, why not create an inexpensive Spinrite station. A stand alone pc with drive bays you can plug your disks into run spinrite on your disks in that station, and then put them into use. Maybe you could describe your situation so we could understand the real issue.

That's kind of difficult with a Surface Pro. ;-) My current main machine is an Asus G14 laptop, and while I could open it up, take out the SSD and put it in an old desktop to Spinrite it, and then put it back again, every time, I'm still not going to do that so long as there are alternatives like Hard Disk Sentinel, even if they most likely aren't as good. The desktop that won't run Spinrite is a Gigabyte Kaby Lake i7 system that has secure boot and TPM activated because it needs to run W11 VMs in VMWare (with a couple of workarounds), even though I have W10 installed on it. It can activate CSM in the BIOS but it just resets it to off if you try to boot from FreeDos, probably because of Secure Boot and/or TPM. There too, I'm not about to take drives out and put them back in again to Spinrite them. I'm also not going to turn off secure boot and TPM because any compromise of the current working setup would be catastrophic, workwise. So if it works in situ, fine, otherwise no.

Sorry for venting, but I had really expected it was actually going to work this time around, after years of waiting, and it just feels like running into a brick wall to discover there are going to be more years of waiting. ;-P

 

[Barry Wallis]

Sorry for venting, but I had really expected it was actually going to work this time around, after years of waiting, and it just feels like running into a brick wall to discover there are going to be more years of waiting. ;-P

From the start of his work on SQRL until now @Steve has always been honest and transparent about the timeline and content of future versions of SpinRite. I understand your frustration as I have Microsoft Surface Books (my daily driver is an SB3) and I won't be able to run SpinRite on the internal SSD until 7.1 (when support for NVMe is scheduled).

 

[coffeeprogrammer]

I think I am on the right thread for this. I am not sure how long, (how many full days or hours), Steve has been working on 6.1 since he decided to do an upgrade. But I wonder how long 7.0 will take after he starts? I was just wondering. Also, my main machine is based on a Asus Z10PE-D8, it is a dual socket xeon based system. Has anyone tested a machine with this same motherboard. I think my Os drive is a NVMe and my VMs are on a normal samsung SSD, does that mean I have to wait for 7.0 to be done?

 

[Mervyn Haynes]

I am not sure how long, (how many full days or hours)

There was a thread about this, not sure when. It turns out that he has been working from Jan 2020 on 6.1, plus another 4 months in 2013. Then the SQRL project took over. So that is nearly 2.5 years, and it is still not out the door. Don't hold your breath for the 7.* series, I suspect they will take a similar amount of time. There is only one person working on this, not a team, so it takes what it takes. As for you drives, there are more qualified people than me on this forum that could answer that, but as I see it, if you can boot to legacy mode, your BIOS "sees" the drives, and they are < 2 Tbt, it should work.

 

[DanR]

I think my Os drive is a NVMe and my VMs are on a normal samsung SSD, does that mean I have to wait for 7.0 to be done?

The proverbial "It depends!" applies here. If your system is UEFI boot only, then you are out of luck until SR 7.0. Unless there is a CSM option in the "BIOS". Enabling that while disabling UEFI boot and Smart Boot would allow ReadSpeed 1.0 and SpinRite 6.0 to run. RS would benchmark the SSD. It may or may not be able to do something with the NVMe drive. SR 6.0 will require the drive controller to be in ATA mode in order to access the SSD. Also SR 6.0 will be subject to a 2.2 TB drive size limitation. SpinRite 6.1, on the other hand, like ReadSpeed, will not care about the drive controller mode or drive size. But it will require a BIOS boot. Unfortunately, proper NVMe support will wait until SR 7.2.

Don't hold your breath for the 7.* series, I suspect they will take a similar amount of time.

If you are talking about the entire series, I would tend to agree. SpinRite 7.0, however, should follow fairly quickly after SR 6.1, in the GRC scheme of things. Earlier this year (2021) Steve made the decision to to a total major re-code of SpinRite 6.1 to facilitate a smoother faster transition to SR 7.0 (and result in a much better SR 6.1). Steve spent many months earlier this year (2021) re-coding SR 6.1 and delaying it by those months. The result will be the elimination of those months of re-coding effort between the SR 6.1 and 7.0 releases.

 

[Mervyn Haynes]

SpinRite 7.0, however, should follow fairly quickly after SR 6.1

I am not a betting man, but if I wager that 7.0 won't be out until 1/1/2023, how many people would bet me $1.00/day on a spread bet? ie you owe me £1.00/day if the release date is after, or I owe you £1.00/day if it is under. For the entire series, well, I will leave others to make that bet!

 

[miquelfire]

I would wait until 6.1 comes out before I make ANY bet on 7.0 (if I were to bet in the first place)

 

[DanR]

I am not a betting man, but if I wager that 7.0 won't be out until 1/1/2023, how many people would bet me $1.00/day on a spread bet? ie you owe me £1.00/day if the release date is after, or I owe you £1.00/day if it is under. For the entire series, well, I will leave others to make that bet!

No bet!

It all depends on when SpinRite 6.1 is released. And that, at present, is unknowable.

 

[Mervyn Haynes]

No bet!

That says it all!

 

[SEC]

If you read the spinrite.dev newsgroups, you will be aware that Steve has found a solution which should provide UEFI booting and require little change to SpinRite. It is still planned as version 7.0, but may be sooner than you think.

See the Development Roadmap mentioned in https://forums.grc.com/threads/spinrites-development-roadmap.32/page-7

"Sooner that you think"... Well, I think it should have been available 3 or 4 years ago! What exactly is the point in posting such an utterly ambiguous comment? If you have a release date in your back pocket, then state it so that people can make a decision to abandon waiting endlessly for a solution or move on to find something usable now. 'Baiting' comments like yours are grossly unfair to those of us that need a solution to this problem.

 

[SEC]

I altered SpinRite's planned development sequence for the purpose of getting it over onto UEFI sooner rather than later.

The move to UEFI is not a small thing for SpinRite because it means dropping all use of DOS, which will not run on UEFI. That means porting SpinRite to another OS that WILL run on UEFI. Fortunately, SpinRite has never used most of DOS, so that won't be a big deal. But it's still not nothing.

The original plan was to bring up native USB and NVMe support before making the move to UEFI. That's what's changed. Since I already have ATA/IDE and AHCI driver code running for SpinRite, that's what I'll be bringing up with SpinRite v6.1 on DOS only. THEN the work to move SpinRite to UEFI, to a new OS, and then add native USB and NVMe will follow.

Ok Steve,
3 YEARS later after your post and v6.1 is released! Will it be another 3 or 4 years for v7?
I'm a developer and I totally 'get' delays and project creep, but people that need to fix a drive issue can't wait 3, 4, 5 or more years. If you cannot support UEFI, then please just say so and lets all just move on. I'm more than happy to pay full shot for a new major release version and don't expect a freebie for all your efforts (which I imagine are quite significant). Just announce a realistic target date and let people decide what to do instead of dangling a carrot.
That would be the fair and the right thing to do.

 

[DanR]

Ok Steve,
3 YEARS later after your post and v6.1 is released! Will it be another 3 or 4 years for v7?

SpinRite 6.1 took as long as it did because it was a LARGE leap forward from SpinRite 6.0. A long delay due to the SQRL project made the SpinRite 6.1 effort even more challenging. SpinRite 6.1 is a huge benefit to SR 6.0 owners with BIOS bootable hardware.

SpinRite 6.1 is the end of the line for BIOS-DOS SpinRite. The next generation, SpinRite 7, will be UEFI bootable, with full support for USB and NVMe drives. SpinRite 7 development ought to benefit from the massive heavy lifting that had to be done for SpinRite 6.1 development. So, I am thinking/hoping about 2 years from start to finish, assuming no major interruptions along the way. As for starting SpinRite 7, maybe 6 months or more down the road?

These things however are impossible to predict. There just too many potential obstacles, perceived as well as unanticipated.
So please do not take my comments too seriously.

I would also point out that Steve is just one (1) individual, doing it all.